Thursday, October 2, 2025

Trump Administration Asks Colleges to Sign ‘Compact’ to Get Funding Preference; The New York Times, October 2, 2025

 , The New York Times; Trump Administration Asks Colleges to Sign ‘Compact’ to Get Funding Preference


[Kip Currier: Be clear-eyed that this "compact" is an unprecedented assault on the independence and academic freedom of American colleges and universities.  It is transparent transactionalism, instantiating a mob-style "protection money" framework in order for universities to secure and retain federal research monies. 

It is also another step in the authoritarian playbook.

The notion that higher education institutions -- whose missions are to advance knowledge, the arts, science, and the common good -- would be incentivized to pledge contractual support to a political administration is antithetical to the bedrock principles of our Founding Fathers and the 1st Amendment of our U.S. Constitution.]


[Excerpt]

"The White House on Wednesday sent letters to nine of the nation’s top public and private universities, urging campus leaders to pledge support for President Trump’s political agenda to help ensure access to federal research funds.

The letters came attached to a 10-page “compact” that serves as a sort of priority statement for the administration’s educational goals — the most comprehensive accounting to date of what Mr. Trump aims to achieve from an unparalleled, monthslong pressure campaign on academia.

The compact would require colleges to freeze tuition for five years, cap the enrollment of international students and commit to strict definitions of gender. Among other steps, universities would also be required to change their governance structures to prohibit anything that would “punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”"

Wednesday, October 1, 2025

Jane Goodall, primatologist and friend to chimpanzees, dies at 91; The Washington Post, October 1, 2025

, The Washington Post ; Jane Goodall, primatologist and friend to chimpanzees, dies at 91She used her global fame to draw attention to the plight of dwindling chimpanzee populations and, more broadly, to the perils of environmental destruction.

"Dr. Goodall, whose research prompted a transformation in the ways scientists study social behavior across species, has died at 91."

Pentagon plans widespread random polygraphs, NDAs to stanch leaks; The Washington Post, October 1, 2025

 

 and 
, The Washington Post; Pentagon plans widespread random polygraphs, NDAs to stanch leaks

"The Pentagon plans to impose strict nondisclosure agreements andrandom polygraph testing for scores of people in its headquarters, including many top officials, according to two people familiar with the proposal and documents obtained by The Washington Post, escalating Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s war on leakers and internal dissent.

All military service members, civilian employees and contract workers within the office of the defense secretary and the Joint Staff, estimated to be more than 5,000 personnel, would be required to sign a nondisclosure agreement that “prohibits the release of non-public information without approval or through a defined process,” according to a draft memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg...

More recently, the Pentagon has issued a requirement that reporters covering the military sign an agreement not to solicit or gather any information — even unclassified — that hasn’t been expressly authorized for release, the penalty for which could be press credential revocation. Reporters have until later this month to agree to those terms."

Lawmakers Across the Country This Year Blocked Ethics Reforms Meant to Increase Public Trust; ProPublica, October 1, 2025

Gabriel Sandoval, ProPublica, with additional reporting by Nick Reynolds and Anna WilderThe Post and CourierYasmeen KhanThe Maine MonitorLauren DakeOregon Public BroadcastingMarjorie ChildressNew Mexico In DepthLouis HansenVirginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHROMary Steurer and Jacob OrledgeNorth Dakota MonitorKate McGeeThe Texas TribuneAlyse PfeilThe Advocate | The Times-Picayune; and Shauna SowersbyThe Seattle Times , ProPublica; Lawmakers Across the Country This Year Blocked Ethics Reforms Meant to Increase Public Trust

"At a time when the bounds of government ethics are being stretched in Washington, D.C., hundreds of ethics-related bills were introduced this year in state legislatures, according to the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures’ ethics legislation database. While legislation strengthening ethics oversight did pass in some places, a ProPublica analysis found lawmakers across multiple states targeted or thwarted reforms designed to keep the public and elected officials accountable to the people they serve.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers tried to push through bills to tighten gift limits, toughen conflict-of-interest provisions or expand financial disclosure reporting requirements. Time and again, the bills were derailed.


With the help of local newsrooms, many of which have been part of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, we reviewed a range of legislation that sought to weaken or stymie ethics regulations in 2025. We also spoke to experts for an overview of trends nationwide. Their take: The threats to ethics standards and their enforcement have been growing.


“Donald Trump has been ushering a new cultural standard, in which ethics is no longer significant,” said Craig Holman, a veteran government ethics specialist with the progressive watchdog nonprofit Public Citizen. He pointed to Trump’s private dinner with top buyers of his cryptocurrency and the administration’s tariff deal with Vietnam after it greenlit the Trump Organization’s $1.5 billion golf resort complex; and he said in an email it was “most revealing” that the White House “for the first time in over 16 years has no ethics policy. Trump 2.0 simply repealed Biden’s ethics Executive Order and replaced it with nothing.”

Government website blames shutdown on "radical left." Ethics group calls it a "blatant violation."; CBS News, October 1, 2025

Faris Tanyos, CBS News ; Government website blames shutdown on "radical left." Ethics group calls it a "blatant violation."

"Ahead of Wednesday's government shutdown, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on Tuesday posted a banner in large type on its homepage blaming the shutdown on the "Radical Left," an allegation that an ethics group said was a "blatant violation" of the Hatch Act. 

"The Radical Left are going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get their $1.5 trillion wish list of demands," the message read. "The Trump administration wants to keep the government open for the American people."

A complaint filed Tuesday with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel by the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen alleged that the banner on HUD's website was a "blatant violation" of the Hatch Act, describing it as "highly partisan" and seeking to "idolize the Trump administration … without attributing any blame for the lack of compromise causing the shutdown."   

The Hatch Act is a federal law passed in 1939 that "limits certain political activities of federal employees as well as some state, D.C., and local government employees who work in connection with federally funded programs," according to the Office of Special Counsel.  

Its purpose, among other things, is to "ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion," the office explains."

The Rainmaker: What 20 Years In Supreme Court Practice Have Taught Me; Above The Law, September 30, 2025

 Neal Katyal  , Above The Law; The Rainmaker: What 20 Years In Supreme Court Practice Have Taught Me

"The Improv Principle

Ed. note: The Rainmaker is a new Above the Law series highlighting attorneys who have built distinguished practices by excelling not only in the courtroom and at the negotiating table, but also in business development, mentorship, and leadership. Each installment will feature candid reflections on what it takes to succeed as a rainmaker in today’s legal industry. Our first featured rainmaker is Neal Katyal...

For years, I’ve been studying improv comedy, and it’s transformed how I think about legal practice. The cardinal rule of improv is “yes, and”—you accept what your scene partners offer and build on it. You don’t say “no” or shut down their contribution. You make your partners look good, and in turn they make you look good.

This sounds soft. It’s not. It’s the hardest discipline I know.

In a meeting, when an associate offers an idea that seems off-base, the instinct is to correct them, to show why you’re the experienced lead counsel. The improv instinct is different: find what’s valuable in their contribution and build on it. “Yes, and we could take that framework and apply it to the jurisdictional question.” Suddenly, the associate isn’t embarrassed—they’re energized. They’ve contributed something real. They’ll work twice as hard for you, and next time, their idea might be the one that wins the case. 

This isn’t artificial, it’s definitely not about giving false praise.  A smart associate, after all, will see through that in a second.  It’s rather about trying to find the diamond in the rough, the insight that the associate has and that can be built upon. I kind of stumbled upon that idea when I did my first case, challenging Guantanamo. At my side were a dozen law students – and they would all have various writing assignments and my duty was to sort through all their insights and build a coherent product out of it. Many were off-the-wall, to be sure, but many were brilliant, too. It just took work to find those flashes of brilliance and to build upon them. That kind of “bottom-up” strategy is one I have taken to heart – so much so that today I routinely take advice on crafting arguments from my Researcher at Milbank. My Researcher is someone who has graduated from college and yet has not attended law school.

This isn’t just about associates or your internal team, it’s just as much about clients. When a client pushes back on your strategy, you could dig in and explain why you’re right. Or you could listen—really listen—to what’s driving their concern. Usually, they’re telling you something important about their business reality, their risk tolerance, or their board dynamics. “Yes, and given that constraint, what if we structured the argument this way?” Now you’re not just their lawyer; you’re their partner.

Why Clients Return

Twenty-three years ago when I wrote that piece, I thought clients hired you for your legal brilliance. They don’t. They hire you because you make their problems smaller, not bigger.

I’ve represented the same clients through multiple Supreme Court cases, not because I won every time (I haven’t), but because they trust that I’ll listen to what they actually need. Sometimes what they need is an aggressive cert petition. Sometimes what they need is someone to tell them that the case isn’t worth the institutional risk of taking to the Court. The clients who keep coming back are the ones who know you’ll give them the second answer when it’s true, even though it costs you a major case and significant fees.

This requires a specific kind of humility: the humility to know that the client understands their business better than you do, and that your legal judgment is in service of their goals, not the other way around. Supreme Court lawyers can struggle with this because we’re trained to think about doctrinal purity and legal architecture. But clients don’t care about your elegant theory of administrative law. They care about whether they can build the project, launch the product, or avoid the devastating liability.

The best piece of advice I ever received came from Eric Holder, who mentored me at the Justice Department in my first stint there, right after my clerkships. He watched me fail to persuade senior officials of a position that I was absolutely certain was right. Afterward, he pulled me aside. “Your analysis was perfect,” he said. “But you didn’t listen to their concerns. You tried to convince them you were right instead of understanding why they were worried. Next time, start by understanding their perspective.”

That lesson echoes through every client relationship, every oral argument, every brief. Start by understanding their perspective."

Disney Sends Cease And Desist Letter To Character.ai For Copyright Infringement As Studios Move To Protect IP; Deadline, September 30, 2025

 Jill Goldsmith, Deadline; Disney Sends Cease And Desist Letter To Character.ai For Copyright Infringement As Studios Move To Protect IP

"Walt Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Character.AI, a “personalized superintelligence platform” that the media giant says is ripping off copyrighted characters without authorization.

The AI startup offers users the ability to create customizable, personalized AI companions that can be totally original but in some cases are inspired by existing characters, including, it seems, Disney icons from Spider-Man and Darth Vader to Moana and Elsa.

The letter is the latest legal salvo by Hollywood as studios begin to step up against AI. Disney has also sued AI company Midjourney for allegedly improper use and distribution of AI-generated characters from Disney films. Disney, Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures this month sued Chinese AI firm MiniMax for copyright infringement."